Dame Laura Kenny has revealed she is expecting her third child with fellow Olympian Jason Kenny after years of fertility issues.
She took to Instagram on New Year's Eve to share the good news, posting a video of her kids wearing t-shirts that read, “I'm going to be a baby's big brother.”
Laura, 32, captioned the post: “2024 was amazing, 2025 will be even more special.”
Other sporting legends congratulated her, with swimmer Rebecca Adlington writing: 'Congratulations ❤️❤️'; and heptathlete Jessica Ennis-Hill commenting: “I knew it ❤️ congratulations to you both.”
The sweet news comes after years of fertility issues for Laura and Jason.
Just hours before announcing the news of her pregnancy, the cyclist revealed her thoughts on her health, claiming that elite sport may have caused her 'out of control' body to suffer a miscarriage.
Dame Laura, Britain's most successful female athlete, has five gold medals and one silver at three different Olympic Games.
Dame Laura Kenny has revealed she is expecting her third child with fellow Olympian Jason Kenny after years of fertility issues.
She took to Instagram on New Year's Eve to share the good news, posting a video of her kids wearing t-shirts that read, “I'm going to be a baby's big brother.”
She says she “gave 100 percent” in every training session and race for more than a decade, even questioning whether she had worked hard enough if she didn't throw up after a workout.
But their engagement may have had an impact on her fertility, she revealed.
After marrying cycling phenom Jason and welcoming her first child in 2017, she miscarried in November 2021 and had an ectopic pregnancy five months later.
This occurs when a fertilized egg implants and grows outside the uterus, usually in one of the fallopian tubes, requiring emergency surgery.
“It was all a shock – I went from being so in control of my body to being so out of control,” she told Radio 4's Today programme.
'My body was just going empty and then it was like, 'Well, wait, there's no way we can do this?'
While she successfully gave birth to another son, Monty, in July 2023, she began speaking publicly about the loss of her baby.
Other athletes soon revealed they had gone through the same thing, raising questions about whether elite sport could have a detrimental impact on fertility.
Dr Emma O'Donnell, an exercise physiologist at Loughborough University, said the lifestyle of a professional athlete places a unique strain on the human body.
Laura and her husband Jason pictured attending the BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2024 at Dock10 Studios in December 2024.
Laura, who suffered a miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy, welcomed her sons Monty and Albie: Albie was born in 2017 and Monty in 2023.
Training at their level burns an incredibly high number of calories, and as a result, athletes typically have very little body fat.
If they don't eat enough food to fuel their workouts, problems with menstrual cycles, such as periods stopping for months or even years, are “very common,” Dr. O'Donnell said.
The main idea is that having a baby requires so much energy that the brain stops reproduction if it thinks there is not enough energy available, he told the BBC.
In the UK, around one in 90 pregnancies is ectopic, the equivalent of around 11,000 a year.
While it is still unclear why they occur, inflammation and scar tissue in the fallopian tubes may increase the risk.
Professor Geeta Nargund, a consultant at St George's Hospital and medical director of Create Fertility, said she sees no “direct link” between sports and an increased risk of ectopic pregnancy.
However, he said there was a potential link between too much intense exercise in the first three months of pregnancy and miscarriage.
During a talk with Women's Health In June, Laura opened up about how the heartbreak of her miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy completely changed her way of thinking and she was left wanting a baby more than any sporting medal.
The cyclist, who announced her retirement from the sport in March, confessed that she was frustrated with her body because she could push herself to incredible physical heights, but couldn't have a baby.
Laura of Team Great Britain and Holly Edmondston of Team New Zealand in the sprint during the Women's Omnium Points Race at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games
She told the publication: 'I can't express how sad I was for a year and 18 months. I mean, you could ask Jase how I was, I was a different person.
'I just went into myself because it was wasting me away. And all I wanted was this little baby; I didn't want gold medals, you know, I didn't want to compete in the Commonwealth Games. I wanted a baby. And it just wasn't happening.
Before the birth of her second child and a year after her ectopic pregnancy, Laura won a silver medal at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, but admitted she did not find happiness in victory.
She explained: “I thought, why would (my body) do that and not do what I want most…?
'I felt like I was living in this world of yin and yang where you could only have one of them.
“And when you're an athlete who's had so much control over your body for so long, it literally felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me because all of a sudden, I wasn't in control of it anymore, and there was nothing I could do.” .
Although he added that he does not want to label his sadness at that moment as depression, he confessed: 'I'd hate to put a label on myself, but that was the lowest I've ever been: 100%. “It was mentally the most difficult period of my life.”
Laura also opened up about how the miscarriage affected her husband.
“No one asked him if he was okay or how he felt,” he explained.
And then I guess I completely underestimated how much I was using him and how much I was talking to him and never saying, “Jase, are you really okay?”
“And it wasn't until a long time after that… that he was even able to tell me how bad it was for him too.”
In March, Laura explained that she had made the decision to hang up her bike after struggling to spend time away from her children and the sacrifice of leaving her family at home.
Speaking about the struggle to balance elite sport and motherhood, she admitted that it is doable but requires sacrifice and that she was not 100% in her best shape for the Tokyo Olympics.
'This comes with sacrifice. And you have to be prepared for less than perfect preparation… I think I came to Tokyo absolutely 100% at my best? No, of course not.
'Because rest days weren't rest days and every time I was home, I wasn't sitting on the couch like Jase and I used to be. I was on the trampoline, I was playing in the sandbox… So I think it was harder? Yes. (But) it doesn't have to be incompatible.'
Laura also opened up about how the miscarriage affected her husband and fellow Olympic cycling legend, Jason, saying: “No one asked him if he was okay and how he was feeling.”
Speaking about the birth of her second son, Monty, Laura said he completely changed the way she thinks as an athlete.
She explained: 'I felt so privileged to have been able to get pregnant again and then bring him into the world (that) I was just struggling to put him down.
'I couldn't leave it for training because why would I? The only thing I wanted was him.
Laura admitted she left her son Albie at home during Covid protocols during the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and found it “heartbreaking”.
'I'm not really a crybaby… and the only time Albie remembers Mum crying is when I had to leave him to go to the Olympics.
And it felt like someone had literally ripped out my heart and was throwing it away. It was horrible. I remember texting Jase when I was in the (Athlete's) Village and just saying, “I hope I never feel that way again.”